Re: [Axiom-developer] #pile vs. non-#pile

[root]

> >> Anyway that is a very good example why pile syntax is
> >> terrible.
> 
> > Ralf, I am sorry but your comment makes be rather angry. :(
> 
> I hope you have some mercy with me. But I cannot believe that you find 
> that code easily readable.

Sorry for re-opening this debate again but....

Having lived with Spad code for years I consider pile syntax to be
the biggest mistake the language designers made so I clearly come
down on Ralf's side of the game.

Even the trivial case of sending code in email that has proportional
font makes the code unreadable. Moving a function from one place to
another within a file can cause mistakes. I had the task of making
many global changes to the algebra code. I could not write an emacs
macro to walk across the files because the insertions were sensitive
to spaces.

Modifications to files in a single line can cause semantic errors
many, many lines away. And adding a line requires that you take
the global syntax of the file into account.

Spaces cannot be counted visually and lead to THE most common
SEMANTIC mistake made in Spad. Fortran made the same mistake
but at least the punched cards had explicit column numbers. Once
the design error was explored with Fortran it should have been
forever banned. I've never forgiven Make for the tab character mistake.
If we are going to count spaces we might as well add line numbers.

What possible advantage can piles claim?

t